How we turned Amber Heard into a villain

The vilification of Amber Heard, that the entire planet participated in so gleefully over the course of a six-week defamation trial in a Fairfax, Virginia court – that concluded last week – has been a thing to behold. On the internet certainly, it still continues, feeding off a mass of misinformation and disinformation that would seem to have been amplified by the verdict returned by the seven-member jury, that found three counts in favour of her ex-husband, Johnny Depp, who was suing her for USD 50 million, and one in favour of Heard, who had counter-sued for double the amount. 

If you'd like to look at that as a football scoreline, sure, Depp won 3-1. But the fact is, even this trial – which has thrown up unavoidable questions about the jury system and televised court proceedings in such high profile cases – has at best found that they both defamed each other. And this was Depp's third attempt. On two previous occasions both in the UK, where the judgements were delivered by learned and experienced judges, and where he was suing The Sun for branding him a "wife-beater," Depp lost. 

The overall message we should derive from all this is that the two stars' 15-month marriage, towards the middle of the last decade, was a toxic brew of mutual abuse fuelled by celebrity excess and debauchery in the age of social media. The yawning age gap between the two, with the ageing Lothario wanting, but failing to control every aspect of the life of the rising starlet, would have played its part also. Instead, Depp is being celebrated like a heroic monarch who has recaptured a lost kingdom (y'all ready for Pirates 6?), while Heard is castigated like one of the nuns of Loudun. 

Within hours of the verdict over on Court TV, she was declared to be "the most despised woman in America." Commentators drove home the point that she is now "unemployable," and how she will struggle to pay the USD 8.5 million in damages that the jury awarded Depp. It was all pronounced with a certain relish that was hard to miss.  

Over on social media, she seems to have taken on the role of everybody's favourite subject of hate and ridicule – the facts be damned. Even Bangladeshi social media comedy pages like Eida Kisu Hoilo? want a piece of her – witness the attached image, which makes no sense whatsoever, since Heard never sued Depp. But so what? It is open season to have a go at Amber Heard. At risk of repeating myself – the facts be damned. 

Source: "Eida Kisu Hoilo?" on Facebook.

No doubt, this tendency in the species has something to do with her being pitted against pretty much the world's favourite movie star, a mantle that Depp certainly could claim on the back of the roaring success of the Pirates franchise, if not for his earlier, more sensitive portrayals of characters such as Edward Scissorhands in the eponymous film directed by Tim Burton, or the drug-addled Raoul Duke in the adaptation of the Hunter S Thompson novel, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which became a cult classic.     

But anyone who followed the trial in Virginia, carefully chosen by the Depp team for its more restrictive laws on freedom of speech compared to California (you can try and look up something called "anti-SLAPP laws in California/Virginia"), where the two stars resided for the length of their marriage, should be able to tell you there was something more at play here. Something more sinister, more synthetic and more downright manipulative, with the aim seemingly to reduce the proceedings in court to a trial by public opinion. Once Judge Penney Azcarate allowed the cameras into her courtroom, and chose not to sequester the jury – meaning they were privy to the entire farce that was playing out on social media in particular – #JusticeForJohnnyDepp was in play for a big payday. On TikTok alone, that hashtag ended up generating 19 billion views, according to the BBC. 

That slick, or rather overwhelming (there was nothing clever about it, just a flood of hatred and disinformation), social media operation employing current and former entertainment journalists and influencers of various stripes was in place well in advance of the trial, and kicked into overdrive once the first live images started streaming on April 11. Although there is no evidence as yet of the Depp PR team orchestrating it, people close to the case, such as former Heard attorney Roberta Kaplan, remain convinced that there must be an influence operation in the works from the weight of the backlash they have received. 

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Heard words are worthy, those unheard are bitter

Cyabra, an Israeli firm that tracks online disinformation, followed the case closely. It analyses accounts that are spreading memes, videos and comments, and tries to assess if they are genuine members of the public. It found that nearly 11 percent of the conversation around the trial was driven by fake accounts, "which is a very high number," in the words of its spokesman, Rafi Mendelsohn. For most conversations, the number is three to five percent. 

Now whether or not Depp's PR team, which has also been lauded by professionals in the field for "a premium display of the finest of PR," (wonder what that entails these days) was behind an inauthentic social media campaign doesn't matter of course. Or it shouldn't. Even if the entire thing has been authentic, driven by sheer star-power and public adulation, what is an issue here is its influence on the proceedings in court. Whether out of devotion to Depp, or the settings on a bot, Heard was relentlessly painted as a liar, a gold-digger, and "a slut." As part of the effort to totally destroy her credibility, each gesture she made in court, even as she just sat there and listened to others testify, was scrutinised in a negative light. Her lawyers were made to sound like buffoons (this one was very strategic), and it was even alleged she was sniffing cocaine on the stand itself (no, seriously). It was that unrelenting.    

Could a jury that was witness to this lopsided public support for Depp, truly be relied upon to deliver a verdict unencumbered by any of it, as was expected of them? The notion always seemed dubious, while the trial was in progress. Today, at the end of it all, it sounds almost laughable. 

It wasn't all online, either. Every day as they arrived in court, the jury could see the legions of Depp fans who had lined up from the night before, for the 100 or so tickets that got handed out for seats inside the courtroom. Although their identities remained concealed, and they didn't appear on TV, every day their actions and reactions to bits of testimony were dissected by these intrepid court correspondents ("Juror 1 was listening intently during this bit"/"Juror 5 turned his face away from Amber at that"), in jackpot social media postings. Far from remaining above the fray, in what became a straight-up "he said/she said" case, it was drummed into the members of the jury in no uncertain terms as to who they should believe, and who they must disbelieve. 

Of course, we'll never know how exactly the jury reasoned. That's another shortcoming of the system. Over in the UK (which also does have jury trials, but not for defamation), where the burden of proof was on The Sun to prove its words were true, and Heard was called in as a witness, we have a lengthy 585-paragraph ruling, in which the judge, Justice Nicol, explains his reasoning behind finding that 12 of 14 alleged incidents of domestic violence against Heard had occurred. 

You may not agree with Justice Nicol in each instance. But at least a few of them made sense to me when I read them. The jury in the US, on the other hand, found nothing Heard – or her sister, or her make-up artist, or her friends – said to be true. At least that is what we must conclude. It was all pretty stunning by the end. 

Mark Stephens, an international media lawyer, told the BBC and The Guardian that the main factor that influenced Depp's victory in America was the fact that the trial was before a jury. In both cases, his lawyers argued that Heard was lying – to make their case, they attacked her character and claimed that she was in fact the abusive partner. This is a common defence tactic in sexual assault and domestic violence trials called "Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender" or "Darvo," according to Stephens.

In the UK trial, Stephens said, the judge recognised that strategy and dismissed a lot of the evidence that did not directly address whether Depp had committed assault or not. In the US case, for example, we saw much being made of whether Heard came through on her pledge to donate her USD 7 million divorce settlement from Depp to charity, even though she still has four more years to do it. "Lawyers and judges tend not to fall for it, but it's very, very effective against juries," Stephens said of the tactic Depp's team had employed. 

The case Depp brought in Virginia revolved around a 2018 op-ed that Heard wrote in The Washington Post as part of her ambassadorial role with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Depp took issue with three of the statements in the article, including the headline "I spoke up against sexual violence — and faced our culture's wrath. That has to change". Well, Heard did face "our culture's wrath." Whether or not it was true when she wrote it, it certainly is true today. And that is abhorrent.

Shayan S Khan is executive editor of Dhaka Courier